Scion
by LoLoGreeneVines
Summary: The cave was both his gaol and his sanctuary. High-fantasy AU for IshiHime Week on Tumblr.
**Author's notes: It was IshiHime Week on Tumblr last month! Yay! Unfortunately, I've been dealing with low-key illness and minor injury for the last couple of months so my contributions are very late. I was going to wait until I had posted all of them to Tumblr before I mirrored them here (I still have five unfinished pieces...), but then I got impatient with this one because it's so different from what I usually write and it's actually of a substantial length and GUYS I COMPLETED SOMETHING HOORAY so I thought I'd make an exception. Just for you. :D**

 **This is my day three contribution, and the prompt was fantasy. I had never written high-fantasy before this, and I'm pretty happy with how it came out, so I hope you like it!**

 **Many thanks to my friend Hilary for the beta job and tolerating my stubborn refusal to budge on a couple of things. ^_^**

* * *

It was cold.

Uryu cocked his ear, listening to the all-too-familiar whistling of the wind dancing around the gusty mouth of his cave, watching, bored, as it brought yet more snowflakes inside his makeshift-abode. It seemed that it was always snowing up in the mountains, the altitude rendering the local climate perpetually chilly, and the peaking terrain invited an eternally biting wind which was inescapable on the occasions when he ventured outside. Uryu had always liked the snow, but after having spent five years surrounded by it, it had long grown wearisome.

It was fine, though. Uncomfortable it might have been, but at least the cold couldn't kill him. Not in this form, anyway.

Uryu exhaled, a frosty cloud hovering before his long, scaly snout, which hit the stone wall and immediately sublimed, creating a glittering web of ice crystals where it made contact. For the first few months of living here, he had entertained himself by forming these patterns, tracing them with his eyes, and looking for familiar figures. This shape was a cow, that one a cauldron, another a crown adorned with four-pointed cross motifs. However, there were only so many times you could find an imaginary bow-and-arrow in a thin sheet of ice, and he had tired of this game after the first few months. So, he mostly filled his hours by sleeping. Sleeping, and sweeping the rough, rocky ground clear of snow.

Climbing to his clawed feet with more grace than his bulky figure would have suggested he was in possession of, Uryu made for the mouth of the cave, preparing to stretch a scaly white wing to beat away the errant snowflakes, only to stop it in mid-air when he saw an unfamiliar silhouette at the entrance, backlit by the dim light afforded by the dying rays of the setting sun.

His ears pricked up in alarm; the only visitor he had ever had in this cave was the warlock responsible for his imprisonment in the first place, come to gloat. This new figure was slight, hesitant, and, now he thought about it, generally unimposing. Gradually, Uryu's azure eyes grew accustomed to the brilliant oranges and pinks of the cloudless sky behind it, and he took in the sight of his visitor.

She was beautiful, he supposed. A young girl in a particularly nicely-cut fur cape, her sturdy boots made of what looked suspiciously like the leather of some snake or other, most likely imported , and the dress glimpsing out from underneath her travel-cloak was cochineal red, the most expensive colour dye of all, and looked as though it was made of velvet. Her caramel-coloured hair was speckled with fallen, unmelted snow and tied back in a long plâit, and her heart-shaped face wore an expression of intense curiosity which made Uryu want to shrink into the shadows and never come out.

The girl finally spoke. "A wyvern," she breathed in wonder.

Uryu folded away his outstretched wing, turned his back on the visitor, hunkered down on his haunches in his favourite corner, and involuntarily shot a long stream of cold sparks from his snout. _Please, don't lump me in with those moronic lizards. Do I look like the sort of idiot who would stumble into a populated town and wind up in pieces on a butcher's stand the next day? I'm a_ dragon.

"I'm sorry, did I offend you?" asked the girl in a gentle voice.

 _Bizarre_. Here was this girl, seemingly-unarmed, who barely would have reached the tops of his stumpy legs if she had been standing on tip-toe, probably the least threatening person he had ever seen, standing before a fifteen-foot dragon, and she was completely unafraid. Either this girl was very brave, or very stupid. Either way, she was an anomaly, and Uryu found himself reluctantly glancing over his shoulder at the girl, who still hadn't beaten the hasty retreat anybody in their right mind would have done already. He narrowed his eyes.

"It's just, I've never seen any sort of dragon before."

 _Better_.

The girl shivered in the entrance, the wind biting through her luxuriant garb, and frowned slightly, as though she were appraising Uryu for any danger. "Do you mind if I come in?" she asked, folding her arms and bringing her cloak closer around her shoulders. "It's a bit nippy."

 _I'd rather you didn't, but I suppose you'd better not die of cold._

Uryu flicked his tail non-commitally, and she slowly made her way inside the cave, standing in the middle in wonder as she looked around, taking in the ever-changing swirls of frost adorning the walls, roof, and floor of the dingy cavern. He watched, carefully, noting how her eyes were drawn to the ceiling as she spun, feasting her eyes on the veins of white trailing the roof. "It's beautiful in here, I've never seen anything like it," she whispered in amazement, turning faster and faster until he knew it must be a blur to her, single-handedly spinning the planet on its axis as though without her efforts, it would grind to an halt, and day and night would cease to exist entirely. It was almost hypnotic to watch her. Mesmerising.

A second later, her boots slipped on the icy ground, and Uryu found himself darting towards her and reflexively extending a leathery wing, catching her as she fell towards the sharp, stony floor. He propped her upright, careful not to catch her clothes or scratch her skin on the hooked ridges of bone running along the edge of his white appendage.

"You... you caught me," she said, in astonishment, as he lowered his wing and slinked away back into his corner, even though he knew his luminous white form would not be so easily hidden.

 _That's a nice cloak. I wouldn't want you damaging it on the rocks,_ he thought.

The girl laughed. "You must be kind. I need to go now, I'm supposed to be supervising training and my bodyguard will be worried. I'll be back, though, I promise!"

Without another word, the logic-defying girl skipped away, careful not to slip on the ice again. When she had reached the jagged cavern mouth, she gave a jovial wave, and disappeared into the fading evening light.

Uryu didn't quite know how to react to any of this.

* * *

It was warmer than usual.

Uryu sat by the fire he had started where the ceiling was lowest, the birds he had caught on his brief jaunt outside jammed onto a large stick, unplucked, their blood dripping down into the flickering flames as the game sizzled above a small fire. Today he had been lucky; his hunt had yielded three fat, wild ducks from the lake downstream of a nearby glacier, and he watched, hungrily, as a drop of grease fell into the fire, giving off a satisfying hissing sound as it fell onto the pile of smouldering sticks. He inhaled the rich, inviting aroma, breathing deeply, and when he exhaled a puff of warm steam hovered before him, allowing him to briefly forget the usual unpleasant chill of the mountain air.

While waiting for his dinner to cook, Uryu inhaled a lungful of warm air and padded across the frosty ground to the far end of the cave, where the rocks were smoother and the air was colder. He exhaled, coating the wall with an even layer of reflective ice, in which he could make out his own face.

It had been a long time since he had looked into a real mirror, and it was difficult to gauge any change in his appearance in a thin plate of ice illuminated by the flickering light of a small fire across the cave. It was impossible to tell whether his dragon form had aged at all in the five years he had been effectively incarcerated, although it didn't help that his memory was all he had to go by.

Uryu scrutinised his own appearance, wrinkling his snout as the familiar snowy-white dragon seemed to snarl at him, exposing sharp yellow teeth between thin, pale-blue lips. Slanted cerulean eyes regarded him imperiously, framed by square azure markings reminiscent of the spectacles he had worn _before_ , and a pattern of sky-blue ran down his long, thin snout where the scales joined up. He stretched his spiked tail, contorting his neck so that he could catch a glimpse of it, and winced when he reminded himself just how sharp the spiny joints were. It was very easy to see why dragons were generally feared by everybody in either nearby kingdom.

Everybody except the girl who had visited the week before, at any rate.

Five years he had lived here. Five years of solitude, deep in the mountains, with naught but his own murky reflection for company, and only his gaoler for the occasional visit. He had been just thirteen when the warlock had come for him, prising him from his mother and father, transforming his body, and flinging him into an independent life nobody in their right mind would have chosen to live. He had been comfortable as a child; never hungry, always entertained, and his father had even been in talks to marry him in the future to a nice girl from the next kingdom over when Yhwach had arrived and put paid to those plans. What did it matter to the warlock that Uryu's father hadn't married _pure_ , anyway?

Although he had long forgotten her name, he always did wonder what had happened to the girl. Not that he had any right to wonder, when he had never met her in the first place. He couldn't even remember her _name_.

The luscious scent of the sizzling duck was calling out to Uryu's nose, and he turned back to the birds, which were hanging over the roaring fire, skin thick with charred, cindered feathers, bubbling violently as the subcutaneous fat sought an opening through which to escape. He judged that they were likely ready, so he returned to the fire, sat down, removed the roasting spit he had rigged up out of thick twigs, and set the steaming birds down on a large, smooth rock. He selected the juiciest one, holding it before him, but just as he was about to bite into it, feathers and all, he heard a sound.

"Hello!"

Ah. Girlie was back. How curious.

Uryu didn't want to care about her return, but he found himself turning in spite of himself to see her slim figure standing in the doorway, backlit by the afternoon sun. She entered the cave with rather less hesitation than she had the last time, undoubtedly lured by the fire, and the tempting aroma of the cooked duck. Upon reaching him, she unfastened her heavy cloak and tossed it aside, revealing a large cow-leather bag slung over her shoulder, which she set down on the floor beside her.

Today's dress was a particularly flattering shade of teal, which contrasted nicely with her loose, sleek auburn hair, and the material seemed to shimmer in the flickering light of the fire. The heavy fabric fell to her knees; short enough to be practical for making the trek up to the cave, but long enough to remain warm when paired with her shiny black snakeskin boots and thick tights. Her sleeves were long and puffy, and the neckline of her bodice was square, modest but feminine. She dressed nicely, he thought. A merchant's daughter, perhaps?

Finally, his eyes fell on her pretty little face, and Uryu noticed that she appeared to be ogling the duck in his hands with a very unfeminine expression of hunger painted on her features. Without thinking twice, he slotted out a talon, scraping away the remains of the bird's ruined feathers, and ripped off a leg, proffering the tender meat to the girl.

"Thank you," she said. As he watched, she sat down on the ground and hungrily took a bite, skin and all, the juices dribbling down her chin as she gobbled the bird with gusto Uryu wouldn't have expected from such a dainty-looking girl. She was slim, true, but her figure wasn't the sort of emaciated he would have expected from somebody starving. In fact, her true hourglass figure and full, youthful cheeks suggested that she had never been hungry in her life. She was proving to be most bizarre.

She was also cold, if her shivering was anything to judge by. Without thinking, Uryu unfurled the wing nearest her, stretching it out and curving it around the area where she was sitting to create a barrier between her and the cold air, trapping the warmth of the fire. She stopped shaking instantly, smiling at him in gratitude.

Realising that he held the remainder of the bird in his hands, he finally joined in, eating his fill of the sumptuously roasted wild duck and periodically offering the strange girl a leg, a wing, a chunk of breast. When every last scrap of muscle had been stripped from the carcasses, and the bones lay picked clean before them, they sat in companionable silence, the quiet of the cave only punctuated by the crackling of the fire and the occasional echoed chirp of a bird outside.

"Oh!" the girl exclaimed, after they had been sitting a while in the warm. "I brought you something!"

This Uryu definitely hadn't expected. The girl turned to her leather bag, rummaged briefly, and pulled out a long, white sheet of mouflon wool, the pristine material bordered by sky-blue fabric ( _was that silk?_ ) and adorned with an embroidered pattern in the same shade of blue as his own markings. The girl unfolded the fabric, revealing a very large square which looked as though it would be easily big enough to cover his sleeping body.

"It's a blanket," she explained, holding up a corner to Uryu's stocky torso and comparing the blue threads of the material to the edges of his scales. "I thought you might be cold up here. I made it to match your scales, see."

Even if Uryu could talk, he would have been speechless. What sort of person works so hard to create such a thoughtful, wonderful gift for a _monster_ they have only just met? He felt a flicker of warmth inside him that didn't seem to have anything to do with the fire as the girl spread the blanket out across his back, like a cape.

"I'm Orihime," she said, brightly, smiling as Uryu regarded her with fascination, a distant memory tugging at his brain, although it was fuzzy, and he couldn't place it. "I guess you can't tell me your name, though..."

Uryu tilted his head at this, narrowing his eyes slightly, as an idea came to him. He rose to his feet, careful not to let the blanket fall into the puddle of duck grease before the fire, and stretched his head towards the low ceiling. He exhaled, allowing a long burst of frost to reach the rocky roof, where the vapour became liquid water with the warmth of the fire and began to fall, drops speeding towards the embers like... like...

"Rain," Orihime breathed. The corners of Uryu's jagged mouth turned up as he attempted a smile. "You're a rain dragon. Your name isn't Uryu, is it?"

Unable to vocally respond in the affirmative, he inclined his head, delighted that Orihime had been quick enough to understand.

She smiled, but her eyebrows knitted together, betraying a sense of mild confusion. "That's a delightful name, but I have to wonder. Why do I feel as though I've heard it somewhere before?"

He sat down, blinking. _I can think of many reasons, Orihime_ , he thought. _A better question would be, why do I feel the same about_ your _name?_

* * *

It was milder than usual.

An unseasonably mild morning, now that he thought about it. October had arrived, and it was getting more difficult to find food; although the wintry chill was year-round at this altitude, the prey still felt the need to hibernate, or migrate, making catching his dinner more of a challenge.

There was nothing for it. If he needed to widen his usual hunting area to the mountain reservoir feeding the nearby Welland kingdom, so be it. It wouldn't even be a disaster if he ended up stuck resorting to catching fish for sustenance. Fish had always been his favourite as a child, especially mackerel, so perhaps grilling a few carp would satisfy that particular pang for nostalgia. He doubted it would be the same without his mother's home-made stew served with rice grown in Stonland kingdom's famous paddy-fields, however.

He missed Stonland. True, the mountain range that was his prison wasn't too far away from his own country, but it was separated by entirely too much no-man's-land, and the warlock had been very careful to restrict Uryu's access to his own country by making all the right promises. That way, he could be sure that nobody would be able to visit - an harsh punishment for somebody else's alleged misdeeds a long time ago.

The warlock's promises were truth. This was simply one of the laws of nature; any promise a warlock spoke, that they were in control of, was unbreakable. _I'll remember what you've done_. True. _I will punish your first born for this_. There are no loopholes. _I shan't kill you_ \- valid - _but you will suffer in the worst way_ \- impossible to wriggle out of. If you could decipher what they were saying, at least you knew exactly what you were getting. Even if what you were actually getting was an headache.

At that moment, Orihime appeared by the mouth of the cave.

"Good morning!"

Uryu immediately rose to his feet, tromping over and deciding that today he would pay her back for her kindness. The blanket lay in his sleeping corner, very lightly creased from where he had been unable to stop himself from rolling over in it in his sleep, and her eyes were immediately drawn to it. She smiled as he reached her, walking past and briefly glancing over his spiny shoulder to check that she was following him out.

The valley below appeared the instant he had crossed the cavern threshold, stretching out for miles before him as he stood at the peak of the rocky precipice, the sky cloudless before him as all of the vapour hung low in the valley, obscuring Welland's capital city from view. No doubt it was snowing under the cotton-wool canopy; both countries were famous for their precipitation, and the mountain-range separating them only served to concentrate the clouds in the valleys.

Orihime emerged from the cave behind him, looking sideways as she took in the jagged pass winding along the edge of the cliff, from which she had accessed his cave. It was impressive that she had made the trip repeatedly, considering she habitually wore dresses and seemed to be alone each time she visited. The path was one he certainly wouldn't want to navigate, even if he were as light as she. Surely it wasn't safe?

This didn't seem to bother Orihime, who approached the edge, standing alongside Uryu as he stilled his wings, hyper-alert in case an errant breeze lifted his wing and smacked her off the ledge. She didn't seem bothered by their altitude, treading the snow on the ledge and smiling as it crunched underfoot. Her honey-brown hair hung in loose curls around her shoulders and towards her waist, tendrils fluttering around her face, her fur cloak parted, revealing a long, thick, lavender-coloured dress, and her cheeks were flushed with the cold. The wonder in her expression was palpable, and he found that for reasons he didn't quite understand, he couldn't look away from her. There was something captivating about the way she stood, brave, curious, desperate to memorise the scene before her.

"I know I can't see the capital at the moment, but the landscape is beautiful, isn't it? That's why I came up here in the first place; I wanted to see a tiny piece of my country from high up. I love Welland, and I wanted to get a different perspective."

This was music to Uryu's ears. Facing the valley, he dropped to his scaly knees, stretched his wings, and looked expectantly at his companion, giving a slight jerk of his head to communicate his intentions.

Clearly, it worked. "You want me to climb on your back?"

He nodded as best he could, and without further ado she hitched her long dress up to her knees and clambered up onto his back, finding purchase for her rubber-soled boots in the lower joints connecting his wings to his body, and settling into a comfortable position with her arms looped around his neck.

"Where are we going?" she asked, adjusting her weight to stay balanced as Uryu rose to his feet, stretched his wings as far as they'd go, and began to gently beat them, testing Orihime's stability. He was acutely aware of how her grip tightened, but she didn't slip, so Uryu slowly turned out to face the valley, stepping over the edge as a gust of wind caught his wings.

Orihime gave a small yelp as they fell, but when Uryu caught an up-draft and they began to ascend, her panicked shouts turned into joyful laughter. He circled the cave's entrance for a while, lifting them both higher and higher into the air with the frantic beating of his wings, before leaning forwards and taking them soaring over the peak of his mountain, away from the Welland capital and towards no-man's-land.

The late-morning sun sparkled dazzlingly on the snow far beneath them, giving the mountain the impression of having been dusted with glitter, and Uryu was careful to fly in such a way that the worst of the glare would evade his passenger's eyes. The endless white was occasionally marred by the greyish-brown of a rock poking through the snow, the unforgiving igneous boulders comprising the mountains making itself known, and every so often the snow parted, revealing a semi-frozen stream of water clear as crystal winding its way down the mountain.

Uryu made a sharper turn than was strictly necessary, noting the strange sensation in his chest when his passenger clung tighter, leaning forwards until he could hear her breathing next to his ear, and swooped low just as the rock closed into a narrow valley, the petrous outcroppings missing the edge of his wings by inches. He followed this path for fifteen seconds or so, concentrating hard so as not to clip the sides, until the tiny valley opened up, revealing a wide expanse of perfectly level snow covering a glacier. The sound of a sharp intake of breath escaped Orihime's lips, and Uryu flew on, gently beating his wings as he descended further, sinking his clawed toes into the snow as they flew and leaving long, straight trails behind them.

To their side the glacier wound downhill, but Uryu crossed the path towards a sheer cliff-face the glacier must have gouged out many thousands of years ago, rising into the air at the last moment before they collided with the rock and forcing Orihime to cling on for dear life as they climbed vertically into the sky. When they had ascended high enough to take in the whole glacier, Uryu paused briefly, allowing himself a moment to wonder why his heart was beating faster than normal, why he was so hyper-aware of his passenger shifting minutely on his back to counter his movements and keep her balance.

It just took more effort to support her weight, too. Yes. That was probably it.

"The mountains are beautiful," she murmured.

Uryu took this as his cue to fall through the air, drifting through the wind as he headed over a peak of the valley and sped down towards the murky cloud they had been able to see from his cave, Orihime emitting whoops of glee. Hoping she was prepared, he forced his eyes to stay open despite the sting of the frosty vapour and soon enough the fog dispersed, revealing that they had crossed the tree-line. Pine-trees lined the well-defined run Uryu was making, sparse at first, but then thicker as they headed downhill and the air grew clearer, crisper, dryer.

The glare of the sun was no longer blinding on the snow, the glimmer of the flakes faded to a bright grey which melded with the overcast sky, creating a vast, monochrome expanse, and Uryu's eyes no longer hurt. It was about time, too; he knew as well as anybody that the snow could permanently damage one's eyesight. He had spent rather too long in the mountains as a child, and been forced to adopt a pair of spectacles as a result. He didn't want to inflict the same destiny upon Orihime.

As he flew past, he snapped a sharp branch from a particularly spindly tree and held it in his mouth as they continued on, beating the familiar path to his favourite hunting spot. The snow was thinning, ever-so-slightly, revealing larger and larger outcroppings of rock and the occasional patch of long grass peeking through the grey. They plunged through the trees, Uryu careful to shield Orihime from the worst of the branches, and then they found themselves in a clearing.

A stream ran down the slope, carving out a wide trench as it wound downhill, the snow heaped around the edges covered with the footprints of assortment of wildlife. The water was peaceful enough to see individual fish below the surface, and as they circled the area Uryu craned his neck, aimed his snout, and decisively spat the sharp stick into the water in the direction of a flash of silver about five metres away. He noted, with some satisfaction, that the surrounding water turned red and he swooped closer to the stream, reaching out an arm to collect and inspect his kill. On the end of the stick was a particularly large, spiny fish, its scales shimmering with a cold blue in the low light, and a streak of blood on its slippery skin.

"Okay, that was impressive," said Orihime, her fingers digging into his scales as she adjusted her weight for his erratic movements. He almost dropped the stick back into the water in surprise, but managed to maintain his grip as he continued to circle the clearing. As she laughed, the cloud briefly parted, revealing that the sun was nowhere to be seen.

He slowed, briefly, creating a map in his mind and estimating that they were around twenty miles from his cave, which was on the other side of the mountain. If the sun had progressed far enough to not be visible from where they were, it was probably time to return.

Uryu sped up the flapping of his wings, climbing higher and higher until they reached the thick cloud and the trees, stream, and signs of life vanished. He stayed level, only the air becoming minutely colder providing any sort of indication that they were moving at all. After a while, they broke through the cloud, and the mountain range lay before them, snow-capped peaks laid out in a dramatic backdrop, contrasting with the clear, blue sky. Once more, the sun was blindingly bright, the vicious winds finding their way under Uryu's scales and into his bones. He felt Orihime shivering, her boots quaking minutely on the upper joints of his wings, and leaned very slightly forwards, stilling his wings until they shot forwards, gliding over the mountain and circling around so the mouth of Uryu's cave was visible, a tiny black dot among seemingly endless white covering the cliff face.

Briefly hovering by the cave mouth to toss the impaled fish inside, Uryu turned sideways, following the trail Orihime took to climb to his cave. He swooped around the corner, ascending sharply upon noticing a flock of ugly, grey wyvern, their faces gripped by feral expressions of hunger and bloodlust and just a touch of madness. Unseen by his passenger, he rolled his eyes; how could Orihime possibly have mistaken his majestic form for an eyesore like those hideous beasts? He could only guess that the closest she had ever come to either was a painting, or an illustration in a children's book.

The wyvern flew on, failing to spot Uryu, who found himself immensely glad for his pallid colouration. The white made him difficult to pick out in the sky, or against the snow, good camouflage from the plethora of creatures in the mountains which might seek to do him harm. Wyvern, bears, fairies, humans...

Not that the latter had been much of a problem, recently.

They spiralled down, down, following the mountain trail for a few minutes until they punched through the cloud and descended upon a large plateau in the murky white, the unmistakeable signs of human life making themselves apparent in the form of dozens and dozens of dark tents laid out in rows beneath them and a curious lack of snow in the area where countless boots had trodden the powder down to nothing. The area appeared to be empty, but after a few seconds a pinprick of a person emerged from one of the dark squares and began patrolling the base

Orihime went alarmingly rigid on his back. "Ichigo..." she muttered, urgently patting the side of Uryu's neck. He turned in the direction she was indicating, banking in the piercing wind and heading sideways, away from the camp, where he knew to be a small grove. Careful not to descend too quickly and upset her inner-ear pressure, he landed silently among the trees, his clawed feet finally touching down on a thin layer of crunchy snow, and sank to his knees to allow Orihime to clamber off.

She scrambled down as gracefully as her lavender dress and long cloak would allow her. "That was amazing," she said, her eyes full of wonder. "Thank you."

Uryu inclined his head in acknowledgement.

"I have to go, now. See you soon."

And just like that, Orihime took off for the camp, the rubber soles of her boots finding purchase in the dirty snow-patches which led downhill. Uryu edged forwards briefly, watching for the edge of the pure, white snow, and shifting from foot-to-foot as he hopelessly wished the warlock hadn't promised that his enchantment banned him from leaving the snow.

* * *

It was chilly, but tolerably so.

Not-so-tolerable were Uryu's dreams, fleeting memories swirling through his slumber reminding him of what he had no longer. The dreams themselves were pleasant enough, but the hollow sensation they left behind wasn't.

 _"Let's introduce them blind when they're older, Ryuken. He'll have a veto, that way, we shouldn't force him into something if he doesn't want it."_

 _"I think you're right, Kanae. He doesn't need to know that we've been talking to the King of Welland, and it makes sense to let them choose, themselves."_

 _"I'm glad you agree. How angry do you think he would be if he knew we were match-making for him?"_

 _"I dread to think. It would be nice if they were amenable to each other, though, imagine the political advantages of such a union. With that sort of alliance, we'd be undoubtedly the strongest countries on the continent."_

Uryu's conscious jolted back to wakefulness at that moment, and he found Orihime dabbing at his face with a piece of fabric.

She gave a small smile. "You were crying. I was worried that your face was going to freeze and it would be painful for you."

He wrinkled his snout, the thin layer of ice-coating it cracking audibly as Orihime winced. "Are you okay?"

As a matter of fact, he wasn't. He missed his body, he missed his country, he missed his custom-tailored clothes. But most of all, he missed his parents, even though they did get angry on the rare occasions when they had caught him eavesdropping on their conversations.

"Hello?"

Orihime's eyes widened as the unfamiliar voice boomed through the cavern, and Uryu instinctively shot back, away from her and into the furthest, most concealing corner, praying that the owner of the strong, male voice wouldn't notice him. The voice sounded inherently resolute, and Uryu determined that its owner could quite possibly do him some real harm if he gave him reason to.

"Ichigo!"

Uryu squinted out of the darkness, staring at the mouth of the cave, where the figure of a fairly tall man stood. Orihime seemed to be acquainted with him, but even from this distance Uryu could see that this Ichigo's fur cloak, which seemed to match Orihime's, bore the trademark bumps of several concealed large weapons. He would have to be careful.

"There you are," Ichigo said, entering the cave and placing a protective hand on Orihime's shoulder. Now Uryu could see that the man's shock of almost offensively-hued hair shone like a spiky, fluorescent satsuma in the harsh afternoon light, and the clothes he wore under his cloak were dark, neat, almost military in appearance. Indeed, the badge on his breast looked rather like that of the Welland symbol for the rank of Major. "Would you please stop wandering off whenever you're supposed to be observing training in the mountains? I'm supposed to be guarding you, and I'm fed up of having to tell your brother that you've gone walkabout yet again. He's worried about you, Princess Orihime!"

Just for a moment, the world stopped spinning. Princess Orihime. That made far too much sense.

"Are you all right, Princess? That path up here is very narrow, you could have fallen so easily! What the hell is wrong with you?"

 _Princess Orihime._

"I... ah..."

 _Princess._

Orihime's attempts to explain herself to this stranger fell silent as Uryu rose to his feet, and Ichigo's eyes fell on him.

"Dragon," Ichigo warned, a dangerous edge to his voice. Uryu took a few slow steps forwards, out of the shadows, and the stranger tossed his cloak aside, drawing a good-quality bow from beneath it. He raised the bow, and reached over his shoulder, plucking a sharp arrow from a concealed quiver and pointing it at Uryu, who neither faltered nor spared the archer a glance before continuing forward. "Watch out, Your Highness!"

Orihime gasped. "Ichigo, don't!"

Ichigo didn't lower his bow, but pulled the arrow further back, increasing its draw-weight. It didn't even occur to Uryu that such a weapon was more than capable of seriously wounding him; it simply wasn't important. He slowly made his way towards the princess, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on her as Ichigo glared at him in suspicion.

"If you take one step closer to her, I'll shoot you!"

"No!" cried Orihime, throwing herself in front of Ichigo and blocking the bow from view. Uryu briefly paused in incredulity. Was this girl completely nuts?

Evidently, the same thought occurred to Ichigo. "With all due respect, Your Highness, are you insane?" he hissed, nearly dropping his bow in his haste to slacken the string while still maintaining an offensive presence.

By this point, Uryu was only a couple of metres away from Orihime, and there was visible panic on Ichigo's face. Uryu ignored the other man, straightening his back and leaning forwards, arching his long neck towards the princess, stretching his wings outwards for balance, and gracefully extending his nose until it was inches away from the back of her shiny black boots.

"Huh?"

Orihime's boots swivelled around until he was staring at her toes, and a second later the sound of a bow clattering to the floor echoed around the cave.

"Is... is it _bowing_ to you?" Ichigo sounded gobsmacked.

The dragon raised his eyes to her face and saw that she was smiling gently down at him. "His name is Uryu," she said, clearly, every inch the assured, unflappable royal. "And he is my friend."

Uryu straightened up at this, rising to his feet and finding Ichigo staring at him, his head cocked sideways. "Uryu, huh?" he asked, kneeling down to pick up his bow and tuck it away under his travelling-cloak. "He tell you that, Orihime?"

"Mmhmm."

His expression was puzzled, but there was a trace of recollection somewhere in his narrowed eyes. Ichigo's eyebrows drew even further into the centre of his forehead, forming a vertical line above the bridge of his nose, and he scowled at the dragon. "Yeah? Anything else you'd like to tell us, Mr. Dragon?"

There was nothing to say. Even if Uryu had been able to vocalise his answer to this question, he wouldn't have wanted to. He stared evenly at Ichigo, who laughed, the unexpected sound very much at odds with the atmosphere, which was about as tense as Ichigo's bow-string had been just a minute ago. His laughter was surprisingly soft, contrasting with his tough voice, and it carried notes of genuine humour as it reverberated off the cave walls. Somehow, it made Uryu reluctantly trust him, and the heavy atmosphere ebbed away, leaving in its wake a sort of... peace. "Thought not. Right, I apologise, Princess Orihime, but I need to take you back to camp before your brother kills me. This whole exercise was for your benefit in the first place, how do you expect to gain an understanding of military tactics if you insist on bunking off?"

The princess' feet shuffled from side-to-side, their rubber soles making a faint squeaking noise against the smooth, wind-hewn rock of the cavern floor. "I was kind of hoping to talk to Uryu for a bit longer," she said.

Ichigo raised an eyebrow. "Oh? I can't let you do that, now," he said, scratching the back of his head and staring up at the ice-encrusted ceiling. Orihime's face fell, and a brief pang of disappointment penetrated Uryu's own thoughts. Ichigo sighed. "But if I can make up a good story, I can accompany you here in the future. Make sure you don't fall off a cliff on the way up. Just not today, because Lieutenant Kuchiki and Corporal Sado saw you sneaking away, and how I had to follow you. They'll keep quiet, but you know what Abarai's like..."

"Thank you," said Orihime.

And just like that, Uryu was content. It was remarkable, really, that years of grumpiness could be so easily wound back by one kind girl with a nice smile and a willingness to spend time with him.

* * *

It was positively glacial. The icy air poured through the cavern mouth, bringing with it flakes of snow, which became flurries, until there was an heap a foot high piling up by the doorway.

Uryu tossed and turned under his blanket, unable to find comfort on the rough, frosty ground. He was asleep, but barely; alongside the bitter cold, he was having to fight off the infernal nightmares which only ever came to tear him back down when he was happy, as though being in a better mood than he was used to was a punishable offence.

 _"Your parents will never see you again."_

 _"Nobody will ever know where you disappeared to."_

 _"You can't break the spell, and you'll never have anybody else to break it for you."_

 _"Only I can break it at will. Of course, I won't, unless it's to kill you."_

 _"Your father shouldn't have married a woman with fey blood."_

He awoke, suddenly, to the memory of the warlock's voice and the mental image of his draconian body being turned back into that of a skinny twelve-year-old, only to be encased forever, screaming, in a clear block of ice.

After the initial panic had settled down, Uryu found that there was a comforting warmth on his snout, and lazily opening his eye, he noted with contentment, if surprise, that Princess Orihime was there, running her hand soothingly along his face. "It's okay," she whispered, her tone inexplicably reassuring over the harsh whistle of the wind. "It was just a dream. "

Uryu slowly sat up, leaning into the princess' touch as she continued to stroke his nose, and regarding her with sleepy eyes as he took the wool-and-silk blanket into his claws. She had already discarded her fur cloak, revealing that today she was wearing midnight-blue, the colour of the starry-sky during a new moon, and she had even accented it with the occasional tiny chunk of silver embroidered into the satin. She wore matching silver bracelets, thin chains bearing star-shaped charms dangling from her slender forearms, and a stunningly-crafted necklace with a silver crescent-moon hung below her collarbone, drawing attention to the V-neck of the dress. Once again, her hair was loose, and rather on the wild side. Clearly, she and Ichigo had trekked through a storm to get here. Where was Ichigo? She seemed to be alone.

Now that he thought about it, she had always looked positively regal. How had he taken so long to deduce her identity?

"Well, isn't this sweet?"

Uryu's blood ran cold (or colder than usual) as the dispassionate baritone rang through the cave. Orihime's hand stilled, and she dropped her arm, slowly turning to face the visitor.

 _No. No, please. Not now._

"Who... who are you?" Orihime's voice wavered a fraction, but she made no sign of backing away.

The warlock strode forwards, into the cave, and inspected her with interest as she jutted her chin in defiance. This action didn't surprise Uryu in the slightest; he had always known she was brave. Why else would she have befriended him in the first place?

"My dear. Has Prince Uryu never once mentioned me to you?" Yhwach asked, circling the pair in the manner of an hawk eyeing its prey, his voice curiously monotone and his lifeless eyes deep-set above his prominent, razor-sharp cheekbones. Orihime's eyes widened in response to this statement, her breathing slowed, and she raised her head, as though a crucial jigsaw-piece had fallen into place. She remained still, briefly glancing at Uryu, before turning back to Yhwach, who gave a short, humourless laugh. "But then, I doubt he's been able to say very much to you at all."

Uryu twisted the fabric of the blanket in his clawed, four-fingered hands, and glared at the warlock, daring him to come closer, but Yhwach simply stood still, addressing him this time. "It's been a while since I last visited. I wonder whether this girl is close to breaking my spell? Hmm..."

Yhwach briefly lifted a finger, and brushed his knuckle across Orihime's cheek. The ferocious look in her wide eyes briefly faltered, giving way to a modicum of fear, but she didn't back down, and Uryu found an inexplicable urge inside himself to bare his sharp, yellow teeth and bite the warlock's hand clean off.

 _Don't you dare touch her._

As though he had read the dragon's thoughts, Yhwach lowered his hand and turned his back on them, daring Uryu to attack. "I can't allow the girl to break my spell, Your Highness," he said, almost apologetically. "I hope you understand."

He snapped his fingers, and Princess Orihime's snakeskin boots left the ground, her arms flailed as she found herself being carried in the direction of the cave mouth. "Uryu!" she cried, her feet grazing the heap of snow by the entrance as she briefly stopped, hovering over the precipice at the side of the mountain.

Uryu moved more quickly than he had ever done in his life. He rushed straight past the warlock, hurdled over the snow bank, and leapt beyond the hovering princess, who was right on the edge of the precipice. Careful to make sure he had slotted away his talons and covered his rough hands in the blanket that was still in his hands, he twisted in mid-air and batted at her, knocking her down into the thick snow by the mouth of the cave as his feet passed over the edge.

"I'm done with you, _Your Highness_."

He remained air-bound just long enough to notice Yhwach smirking, as Princess Orihime landed on her backside in the snow, staring at him, her delicate mouth agape as though she couldn't believe her eyes. He smiled at her.

And then he fell.

 _When did she come to mean so much to him?_

He plunged through the air for what felt like a million years, only just self-aware enough to make the tiny adjustments in his trajectory necessary to avoid dashing himself on the rocks. After a while, it occurred to him that if he didn't unfurl his wings soon, he was going to land, and a two-ton dragon hitting a mountain at speed was going to leave a big mess for Ichigo to stumble across.

He spread his limbs, preparing to catch the air, only to find that the wind did nothing to slow his descent, and that he was still only accelerating, plummeting, the rocky ground below him getting closer and closer by the second. Desperate, he held his arms before him, only to realise that his thick, scaly, white arms had been replaced with long, slender, clothed arms, and his four-fingered hands, equipped with talons, were now five-fingered, and a few inches of each wrist were exposed at the ends of two bottle-green sleeves.

The same bottle-green he had been wearing five years ago, upon his transformation from young Crown Prince to dragon.

Oh, hell. He was going to die without his wings. He closed his eyes, willing the contact to be painless when he eventually hit the rocks.

 _Blanket._

This word urgently presented itself to him. His eyes flew open, and he quickly untangled the blanket from around his fist, separating the corners with the utmost celerity so he had two in each hand. The air rapidly caught in the makeshift parachute, beginning to slow his descent.

But it wasn't slowing it enough.

The snowy ground was approaching rapidly, and Uryu screwed his eyes shut, relaxing every muscle in his body as best he could.

 _THUMP._

* * *

It was the coldest Uryu had ever been.

He ached all over, barely able to move for the all-encompassing chill in his bones, and he felt that even if he could move he would only shatter into pieces instantly.

Was he dead? It was difficult to say; aside from a brilliant darkness, the only thing he was aware of was the pain, but he had always heard that death was supposed to be painless. Then again, how could anybody possibly know that? It wasn't like anybody had ever returned from the dead to say.

"Uryu!"

Great. Now he was hallucinating. Although, wasn't that something that somebody alive would do?

"Uryu!" came the voice again. He frowned. The voice was female, light, warm. Concerned? "Prince Uryu!"

The world suddenly became lighter through his eyelids as a sheet of heavy fabric was tossed backwards, away from him, and he felt warm hands digging at the snow comprising his frosty tomb. A couple of seconds later, he gasped, as the same hands seized his shoulders and dragged him upright, every bone in his body screaming in pain as his saviour threw her arms around him, letting go after a couple of seconds and hovering in front of his face, clearly examining him for damage.

Orihime?

She began to sniff, and although his vision was blurred (no glasses, he deduced), he could easily tell that she was crying.

"I was so worried," she said, her voice wavering. "He said he had killed you."

 _He._ Uryu's eyes widened.

"Yhwach. Where is he?"

The princess sniffed, her lower-lip wobbling, and she looked away. "That man? He disappeared. He said something about how he was done with you, disappeared into thin air, and then I rushed down here to you. It's a good thing there was so much snow to cushion your fall..."

If Uryu had one reason to hate Yhwach, this was it. Not for tearing him from his family and plunging his country's future into uncertainty, but for making this innocent girl cry. Such an act was unforgivable. He could have murdered the warlock, were such an act possible. He shivered, the rage over Yhwach's upsetting of Orihime mixing with the chill of his undersized outfit failing to ward off the cold of the snow around him.

Her voice dragged him out of his fury, and he found her looking straight at him. "Uryu, you're human."

"So I am."

"I knew I'd heard your name somewhere before. It was you, wasn't it? My brother was in talks to arrange a marriage for me..."

 _Enough._ He barely dared get his hoped up, but he had to know. "Orihime, do you love me?"

 _"The only way you can break this spell is to convince somebody to fall in love with you, but let's be honest, you could be trapped up here for decades before anybody found you..."_

She gave a light frown, sitting up in the snow and brushing a few flakes from her hair. She looked at him seriously. "I don't think so. I barely know you."

This he had suspected. Of course. Yhwach had broken the spell willingly, in order to kill him. So why was his heart starting to break like his body would have done on the rocks without the princess' blanket to save him?

Orihime took a deep breath. "... But I think I could, given some time."

Hope.

He couldn't pinpoint the precise moment he had fallen for her kindness, her generosity, her positivity, but on reflection it was undeniable that he had. It was okay that she didn't love him; Yhwach had made an unbreakable promise to leave him alone forever, Stonland would have its crown prince back, and there was a very real chance that Princess Orihime might come to love him in return in the future.

It was the best outcome Uryu could have wished for.

Orihime clambered to her feet, the snow falling from her thighs as she stretched out her hand and smiled. "Come on, Prince Uryu. Let's go home."


End file.
